Advising governments about science is hard, so we need to train people

How science advice in the United States broke the COVID–19 understanding of the science-advised world’s colossus

That sums up the poor opinion that many have of science advice to governments. Nature’s survey was sent to several thousand people worldwide, most of whom are affiliated to the International Network of Government Science Advice (INGSA), a global association of researchers and policymakers, based in Auckland, New Zealand. Some 80% of the nearly 400 respondents rated their country’s science-advice system as being patchy, poor or very poor. It was said by both sides that policymakers and politicians ignored and under valued science advice and researchers failed to understand policy.

Zuckerman is said to arrive, say his piece and smoothly exit, and then there would be no sign he was involved once the controversy was over. Mark Ferguson, who retired after he was the chief science adviser to the government of Ireland from 2012 to 2022, said there was a lack of transparency and that it summarizes how science advice should work.

National academies of scholars are more central in other countries. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in Washington DC are a key pillar of US science advice, along with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and its director, who advises the president. There are also myriad other ways that research informs branches of the US government.

To Pielke, COVID-19 exposed the United States’ lack of a high-level expert advisory mechanism to inform the government’s response — one equivalent to the United Kingdom’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), for instance. “Given that the United States is kind of the world’s colossus of scientific research, it’s a shocking oversight,” he says.

But Pielke argues that by challenging government advice, Independent SAGE often “delegitimized SAGE, and in the process, science advice itself”, he says. “Even members of Parliament got confused about SAGE versus Independent SAGE.”

In the Philippines, less controversially, a pop-up shadow team of experts called OCTA Research became a leading source of science advice during the pandemic. The group was successful because it had a wide range of expertise, including physicians, economists and a media specialist, says Benjamin Vallejo Jr, an environmental scientist and OCTA member at the University of the Philippines Diliman, Quezon City. It also communicated to politicians “in a way that wouldn’t threaten their public credibility”, he says.

In future, Pillay and Pielke agree, science advice needs a mechanism to incorporate a wider diversity of expertise. “If the shadow voices become significant enough or have enough influence, you invite them into the room,” Pielke says. The majority of respondents said science advice doesn’t incorporate diversity.

Another requirement is a repertoire of people skills: the ability to communicate complex ideas in succinct, everyday language; the capacity to build trusting relationships, so that politicians have faith in the information they receive and that their confidences will not be breached; being able to respectfully understand others’ views and priorities, however different. Mark Ferguson, who was Ireland’s chief science adviser between 2012 and 2022, said only in this way could you convey the evidence in a way that would help them understand and appreciate it.

Many institutions worldwide teach to both scientists and knowledge brokers. Zakri Abdul Hamid is the former science adviser to the Malaysian prime minister and founder of the international institute for science diplomacy andsustainability in Kuala Lumpur. The institute trains people to bridge science and international diplomacy, preparing them for United Nations climate meetings, for instance.

INGSA offers training too, but wants to do more, says Rémi Quirion, chief scientist of Québec, Canada, and INGSA’s president. Research funders and employers need to incentivize researchers to do science-advice training and work. Some 60% of survey respondents said that funders’ failure to do so was an impediment to science advice.

These efforts need to be informed by evidence. More than 1,900 initiatives were identified around the world that promoted greater engagement between policymakers and researchers. It was sovid. Policy 18, 691 –713 is in effect. Only six percent of them had been evaluated to assess how well they worked.